Sunday, March 12, 2006

Feathered Friends

Have you noticed how the birds are coming back, now that Spring is just around the corner? I step out our back door and the racket is almost deafening because they're so busy talking to one another. We live in a community that's surrounded by a large county park, Winton Woods (our village is one of the original Greenbelt communities, founded and planned in the 1930's). So we see a lot of birds, flitting from tree to tree, street to street, looking for the best buffet they can find. We haven't been too faithful about feeding the birds this winter, but I did finally fill our feeder a couple of days ago. It didn't take long for the word to get out that our back yard feeders were open for business.

Once in a while a brave little sparrow or chickadee will venture under cover on the back deck, usually scouting locations to safely build a nest. Almost every spring we've had birds bustling in and out of the deck, carrying straw and grass into the eaves to make the best nest ever. This guy came onto the deck several times, perched on top of the grill and yelled at me through the back door. (Hey, mister, this is my house, and I'm not going to leave the window just for you!)

We can always count on a couple of acrobatic squirrels to raid the bird feeders. The dogs love to chase the squirrels off the feeders, and just after I took this picture I let the dogs race outside and scare him away. (Don't worry, no small defenseless animals were harmed during this photo shoot!)

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